


Mirrored

by residenthale



Category: SAYER (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, Nightmare stuff, Other, at least i think that's what this is, general unsettling stuff, gets a little physical but nothing too heavy, it's like make-outs and touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23124856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/residenthale/pseuds/residenthale
Summary: He doesn’t remember thinking his thought password, but Sven finds himself in his room, drowsy, dizzy, his droopy eyes looking around the bare walls, the bare floor, the bare ceiling.
Relationships: IF YOU SQUINT AND/OR READ THESE TAGS, Sven Gorsen/SAYER
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	Mirrored

He doesn’t remember thinking his thought password, but Sven finds himself in his room, drowsy, dizzy, his droopy eyes looking around the bare walls, the bare floor, the bare ceiling. Everything in his residence is clean and identical to all the rooms in Halcyon tower; it is a place for resting oneself, for cleaning oneself, for dressing oneself. One of the rare spots of pretend privacy to rest and recharge for more hours of work, more hours of trying to fit in among the sea of other residents, more hours of trying to be useful.

Sven doesn’t know how many artificial nights he’s come back to this space, his day cycles blurring together the past few days months years, but there is nothing to hint at his ownership of the room— _is_ it even his? Can anything be _his_ in this tower? Another resident slept here before him. Another resident will sleep here after him. Other residents will keep and have kept their datapads on the charging station, will wear and have worn this uniform, will hear and have heard the chime of low-level alerts as they lay in this bed. For a moment, he feels like he is hearing the melodic beeps, seeing the blurring ghosts of residents laying down and rising from the bed—echoes of datapads being picked up and put back down simultaneously, wisps of residents of past and future all swarming the room, moving through their routines. When he tries to focus on them, however, they all vanish, and he is alone again in the seclusion of the room. 

Sven stumbles along to the bathroom, his head swimming as he tries to remember, again, how long it has been since he woke up from stasis and began his work, how long he has been without his memories. He’s heard other residents talk about how differently time passes here on Typhon versus how it did on Earth, how the days are just _different_. A false cycle of day and night are all Sven knows, of course, but something does seem a little off about time, even right then as he presses his palm up against the doorframe to steady himself. He can’t remember when he woke up, can’t remember hearing any voices nudging him to get out of bed and to work.

Lights illuminate the black, the smooth perfect surface of the bathroom floors and walls. He’s used to the lights gradually warming so as to not temporarily blind him, but now it seems too dark. Too dim. He walks to the sink that registers his motions and clicks on, water streaming from the flat faucet onto his fingers before he splashes it onto his face. The drips run down his chin, dripping into the basin to be recycled somewhere, wherever it goes. 

He can’t wake up still. Inside his skull is soft cotton, puffs of cloth that could leak out of his nose, down his chin, dribble and choke him. He’s being smothered. Pressing a hand to his forehead, he looks up into the mirror above the sink, wondering if he can see how tired he is, see the red veins around his irises, the darkened bruises that lined his eyes, the grey clouds of exhaustion that surround him always and envelop him whenever they get the chance.

Instead he sees nothing.

Well, nothing isn’t _quite_ the truth; he does see his face, his overgrown and unkempt hair framing it, obscuring parts of it where it has become overgrown—but his face is all smooth skin.

He sees no eyes, but he does still see. Sven can feel his mouth opening and closing but sees no movement in the mirror. The skin is stretched across the face in the mirror with no interruptions, no hints of eyes or a mouth or a nose. Dotted with his freckles across his nose, across his cheeks, but blank where anything else should be. Expressionless, unmoving. 

Sven’s shaking hand lowers from his forehead as he realizes his reflection does not match his own posing. Even as he starts to back away from the mirror, the image of himself remains the same distance away, its hands at its sides, its shoulders relaxed. His own tense up, and he can feel his heart beating, racketing against his ribcage as he turns away from the mirror with wobbly steps.

But it’s here. 

Without thinking, Sven steps backwards when he sees the doppelganger in front of him, the sink’s rim pressing into his lower back. He can’t move any further back and the sink clicks on again, starting to fill the basin. 

Even if his double has no eyes, Sven knows that it is watching him. It is blocking his only way out of the bathroom, standing in the doorway and _staring_. 

Observing. 

It has no eyes, but he can’t look at it without feeling watched. It has no eyes, and yet it is all-seeing, watching him.

The only sound Sven hears is that of the water from the sink, of the water trickling down the drain. 

His heart is in his throat as he tries to slide against the edge of the sink basin, side-stepping and staring into the smooth canvas of stretched skin. There is this feeling that if he keeps its attention on his gaze, then maybe, maybe maybe maybe, he could just…slip by, somehow. 

The double matches his movements, delayed by just a moment, stepping and side-stepping moments after Sven had. The narrow walls of the bathroom roughly push the two closer, their orbit squeezing in the center as Sven presses his back against the wall separating the room from the rest of the residency and the double mirrors the motion, the two the closest they have been. At this distance, Sven can see the freckles clearer, their uneven marks erratically dotting his/its skin, the pale lines of scars scattered around the hairline. He is repulsed and yet he feels himself stop side-stepping, unable to move for a moment, and his/its/their residence is filled with the sound of his rough breathing, of his heart hammering so loud that he thinks this is it, this is the last thing he’ll ever hear. 

And then he steps again.

He’s in the main room, the other in the bathroom, and he steps as fast as he can to put distance between them before the bathroom door slides shut, and Sven stumbles back and falls into his bed—the bed—everyone’s—anyone’s bed. He sinks into it as much as an Aerolith Dynamics issued bed lets one sink into it before rolling onto his stomach, pulling the blankets over his head and pressing his face as hard as he can into the pillow. 

At first, there is nothing. The comforting darkness cradles him and he is safe. If there is nothing, there is nothing that can hurt him. In the dark, only he can hurt himself and he can’t bring himself to do anything but to shiver, his body slick with sweat and trembling from adrenaline, his head still overflowing and being pressed down by the cotton stuffing that seems to have replaced his brain.  
But the darkness doesn’t last.

It is no longer just blackness after a moment.

Sven is staring at the mattress and his eyes won’t close, even if he wills them to. He can’t force his lids to close and hide what he sees.

Not even when the mirrored face is against his own.

There is only the two of them, face-to-face, their identical bodies touching at the tips—their foreheads, their chests, their hips, their toes. Just the tips, lightly touching. Warmth against warmth. 

His heart’s pounding is thundering, roaring as it reaches towards him—a hand so familiar, so alien, so completely wrong to see at this angle—and presses against his chest.

Its hand is against his telltale heart. Sven knows it knows his fears, his confusion, his want.

Sven places his hand over its heart, over the beat. Presses against its chest and listens to its concerns, its worries, its connection that keeps it tethered to him.

They are the same, and they are not. But their hearts are beating in sync, their wants and their fears are the same.

The double, keeping its hand on his chest, leans in and presses its smooth flesh against his chapped, trembling lips. It has no mouth, but Sven can feel the phantom of one, of warmth and softness pressed against his own. He hesitates before closing his eyes and pressing his own kiss back against the lips that aren’t there, the lips that seem to part suddenly even though that can’t be when this doppelganger only has scarred and freckled skin to offer him. But that’s more than enough when he’s in the darkness, when he’s trembling alone and afraid.

But even if it can’t be that they’re kissing, he lets his own lips part so that it can slide its tongue into him, and its grip on his uniform shirt tightens, pulling him closer. Closer to it. His own grip on its identical uniform tightens, desperate and needy and shaking. It’s dark. It’s dark and hot and he feels the sharp need to be closer to it.

His hands wander. They rub its chest; they rub down its sides. The double’s mirrored actions begin again, and Sven is being touched, caressed, teased. Its fingers pause on scars across his/their abdomen, fingernails digging into the tender flesh and they both flinch, both wrap each other into an embrace.

Sven pulls away from their kiss.

Sven _tries_ to pull away from their kiss.

But he can’t, and it’s warm and soft and something is wrong, and he can’t move.

His eyes open and he can see that it is melting into him. Hot drops of the doppelganger’s skin are dripping onto his own face, onto his arms and his chest. Its skin is sloughing off into him, into his mouth and into his own skin. Conjoined where they previously were embracing, he can feel the movement of hot, waxy skin across his face, across his nose. He tries to keep his eyes open so that he can see, but it dips across his eyes and he is blinded, he is burning, he is hot and he is no longer himself, his body is not his own, there is a flash of red and he is afraid – 

He is flailing limbs and shaking hands as he struggles to throw the blanket off himself, and Jacob Hale finds himself alone in a dark room. At first, he thinks he doesn’t know this place, but as the adrenaline and panic subsides and he looks around, he can recognize certain parts and his breath returns to him.

Although he can’t loosen his grip on his blankets, he continues to visually guide himself around the room as he pants in an attempt to catch his breath. A datapad on a charging panel. Plain beige walls painted with perfect precision. A sealed door leading to a bathroom. The room, in many ways, is like a color swapped version of the one he stayed in on Typhon. But, in many other ways, it was different; this was a different datapad, these were doors that didn’t look to alternate dimensions to determine whether they would open or not.

And there was a window looking to the outside.

A real window. One that allowed the viewer to see what was truly on the other side of it. One that looked out onto the long grass dotted with weeds and wildflowers outside, onto the trees that were still growing back their leaves from the bitter winter season. It was dark, but there was enough light for him to see the rustle of the higher grasses in the wind. 

Jacob Hale was on Earth. 

His grip relaxed on his blankets and he took in a shuddering breath as he shifted closer on the bed to the window. From here, he could see the full moon – and Typhon, bright and staring right back at him.  
For a moment, Jacob kept its gaze.

He was still breathing heavy, trying to collect himself, and only know was he feeling the sweat rolling down his back, the dampness of his bed from where he had thrashed and rolled and sweated and cried while he slept. With a sigh, he looked away from the window to flip his pillow over and rotate around his blankets so that there was a thin line of defense between him and the drenched sheets. This was routine at this point.

Though in some ways, this had been more vivid, more intense. More…intimate. He couldn’t help but shake his head at the last word choice and flop backwards to lay down again.  
Had spilling his small collection of memories to SPEAKER brought this upon him? Let his thoughts tear through him when he couldn’t ward them off? During the day, he could keep busy. He could keep numb and distant. It was when he couldn’t control his thoughts that he would scream and thrash and tremble.

It had been the same on Typhon, really.

Jacob brought his hand to his forehead, rubbing his temples. Fingers tracing the scars along his hairline. Through his overgrown hair. He lets his hand flop behind his head, resting atop the pillow.

It’s silent; it’s cold.

Turning his head slightly, Jacob looks back up at the moon, then at Typhon. 

At moments like these, it was hard to imagine humanity was in its final minute. That they were all taking their collective final breath as a plague was being delivered down upon them. That they only had so very few chances left to survive.

That he was one of the only beings to know this, and the only one to not be doing anything about it.

Closing his eyes, he lets the guilt wash over him, lets the sickening feeling consume him until he feels soaked through with disgust. 

And he breaths. 

He is alive.

His body is his own and his mind is quiet. 

But something inside him feels hollowed out and empty, purposeless and lost. He still feels himself searching, reaching out, hoping.

He was once told that hope was the most human of all emotions, and that’s all he has left now to try and fill the gaping wounds inside him.

Sometimes it felt it was harder to heal when he still held onto his feeble hope, his quiet wonder if his path would ever cross again with…

Jacob Hale tries to keep his eyes closed and think of nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly this is based on a reoccurring nightmare that's been plaguing me since high school. Had a few more like this while writing it, too lol. 
> 
> I had a friend who read this ask me about it, so I thought I would answer here as well that the doppelganger in this is many things, but yes, it does mostly represent SAYER. It is SAYER, it is Sven's feelings on identity, it is his horror and also comfort in body sharing, and it is a desire and fear of trying to feel connected to others. It also can be whatever you want it to be because death of the author and everything but that's what I was thinking about while writing this.


End file.
